


The arrested wind

by gogollescent



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-05 10:53:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12188598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: Dírhaval speaks to a survivor of Nargothrond about Túrin, Gwindor, and Finduilas. I avoid naming most OCs.





	The arrested wind

It was tradition in Nargothrond that matters of war be debated before an assembly, in the great cavern where the river Ringwil raised all speech to a bellow on its back, and so—though Orodreth and all his councillors were slain, and Gwindor died first of those princes—Dírhaval had only to ask a cook who had taken a shift off to go hearken—and who later had run like a deer through the smoke in the forest, all the way west—to learn what words passed between Gwindor and Túrin before Túrin led Gwindor’s people to war; and, further, what words passed between Gwindor and the king, when Gwindor came unburdened out of Angband to his door. 

The cook had short brown hair and a slumbering beauty, long face dubbed with a short nose on a long neck, rounded shoulders not a fault when setting off her face, although she never straightened; she laughed like an old woman when she remembered how Turin had found the dwarf-helm. “Ha! oh, ha! Ha, ha, how daring we thought him, out to out-glower the orcs—none of our lords would have made themselves so ugly. And he said: ‘Valiant defense of the borders and hard blows ere the enemy gathers; in that course lies the best hope of your long abiding together. And do those that you speak of love such skulkers in the woods, hunting strays like a wolf, better than one who puts on his helm and figured shield, and drives away the foe, be they far greater than all his host?’ But I forget what else,” she added, going blank, using a Sindarin term humans had coined. I unremembered. She did not mean ‘I forget’; she meant, ‘I did not hear,’ or ‘I understood it poorly,’ or ‘I am not interested in the wretched end of a memory that began in merriment.’ And he could not press her, who would, in her politeness—determined to match his words to the words that she had learned—would say only and firmly, “I forget.”

But never mind. He guessed the drift of Túrin’s thought. Túrin (he was sure) thought always of his mother and his sister, who were to him the whole of Dor-lómin, who feasted on his feats of arms and withered when he cowered. He knew Túrin. Gwindor was another matter; _do those that you speak of love such skulkers_ , had Gwindor had an answer?

What did Gwindor think of women?

Finduilas, unlucky lady, won passage for her lover and the stranger whom he led. When first Dírhaval heard the tale, she was a second Nienor; high-hearted and sorrowing, golden as dragon-mail—perhaps seven feet tall. She leaped barefoot from the dais, the throng parted for her, and she took Gwindor’s hand between her hands.

Perhaps she had. He found another watcher, a chemist-turned-fletcher who came to Nargothrond in Curufin’s train, and left in Celebrimbor’s ragtag, rallied flock—though now Celebrimbor dwelled with Gil-Galad on the Isle and this chemist, somehow, sat whetting arrow-points in Sirion, warning bystanders from his little pot of poison. This was an elf with weak blue eyes that shivered in their high seat, and vanished when he yawned, which was often; he said that Finduilas, before her father’s throne, pleaded amid a hundred voices, and although her voice was high and pure none other hushed, knowing it well. First her voice, then her quick feet, and then at last her words were heard through that low hall, before her fair head plunged out of gloom, hands held before her like a diver’s hands. In this description Dírhaval heard the chemist’s blindness and the fletcher’s venomed aim, but nonetheless it lodged in him with barbs, and he dreamed of a lady who in girlhood harbored the gleam of new-hardened wheat, and now was white-haired, clad in white, alone.

But maybe she was brave and not high-hearted. If she came to her father’s other councils, none now living could confirm it: I forget, said the cook. I was away, said the purblind fletcher. 

Túrin himself had spoken of Finduilas to the people of Brethil. He called her queenly, and a golden tree, though he said it—said the woodsman—seated by the mound, and meant perhaps to plant one there. Túrin had a straightforward enough imagination.

He took to reading Gwindor’s lines in his father’s louring tone; alone by the creek, he sat perched on driftwood and croaked to himself, “A woman is not easily deceived.” Nay, a woman is not easily deceived. Nor will you find many—nor will you find many who deny that they are loved, if that is true—and he felt a warm glow rise in him, as though he had announced to the forking stream that he was loved. Which he was, he thought; how else to explain the willows touching palms to the green shapes in the current? Like a wicker bridge, woven for men to climb and meet themselves. Sunlit evening, tall overhead, sewed for the river a shirt of bright rings. To hear there was the spill of the water, going on its belly over stones. Yes: all of that and more. How was it that Gwindor, dead, could make him laugh and look with kindness on his father, who would shortly—in a little while—drive his poor pledged sister mad? Linnor had threatened twice already to turn him out, to make his way—she said—as Dírhaval, in a hut of reeds.

I have a house, Dírhaval argued. Not only that, I will never starve, for every hall accepts me. I have a place in the king’s own lodge when I hunt with his riders. She had his pen out of his fist and held the point very near to his eye. She said, You live in the hollow.

This was Sirion. The reeds grew to man-height, so thickly that they seemed to stand by leaning on stacked neighbors. It was hard enough to find a slender reed to cut a nib from. In wind-tossed thickets on the bank he heard pens dulling on the page, but preferred not to listen, as he already sometimes feared he would go mad.

“Hello,” said the cook. 

He jumped to his feet, bowed, smiled; cursing himself without heat, he relaxed when she smiled as well. She had a basket of baked fish and offered him a trout still on its skewer, and, when he took it, sat beside his place on the log, calling him to sit also. Wind lifted her short hair and showed her reddened cold ears, small and round for an elf’s, but pricked as though attentive to far sounds, and yellow at the center from the light.

“I have remembered something,” she added, inconsequentially. “My aunt’s husband was Guilin’s steward. Everyone in my family hated him because he always making up to us with stories about the great princes. He said that Gwindor and Finduilas fought much over the Adanedhel’s love for her.”

Dírhaval considered the fish with great interest. He had been told triumph lent him a fierce expression. He had no wish to scare his friend off now.

“Raised voices—he overheard—Gwindor said, ‘Why does he seek you out, and sit long with you, and come ever more glad away?’ And that was true, I remember; they sat together in all kinds of places, on the terraces, in the treasury, and even by the earthworks for the bridge. No doubt he told her much you would be glad to know. But as for me, I think Gwindor a fool; few men would have loved her for listening. It reminds them what they hold dear in themselves.”

“That’s true,” he said. The first time he had interviewed her, she had spoken for an hour about the cavern of assembly, like an egg on its side—but so vast!—and with stalactites Finrod himself had sung down into pillars, or was it that he had worn holes in the walls parting small caves, she couldn’t decide; and the window on the river, whence a grey light came, like a shadow thrown on the gliding light of a thousand lamps and torches. And now when she spoke it was matter-of-fact and with hardly a jibe at her uncle. She was Túrin to him in that moment with her straight-sloping neck, the flushed skin of her neck and jaw with her face as fair as fair could stay at sunset, the cupful of shadow under her chin. He had burned the roof of his mouth. The fish was tender, almost flavorless, flaking between his teeth like a cake of river-flesh; a little muddy, even, as all water here was. He ate the crisped-black skin for a whiff of charcoal, which coated his mouth. “Don’t you love me, your loyal hearer?” 

She gave him a startled wink; and smiled, and smiled.

“I do not think Finduilas loved the Mormegil either. Or, that is, I believe they loved one another as sister and brother.” 

Trying to lick his fingers clean just spread around the soot. Among the things she had told Dírhaval was that she was an only child. But he was inclined to believe her, almost. To Finduilas Túrin should have been a child. She must have wanted to love him like a brother—it would have been best, by far clearer and finer, to love him as a brother, even when her death walked near. The death he handed her down to; but if they were kin, it would have been her right to love him, blaming him.

“Do you not agree?”

“I can’t say.” Up again to pace. She followed him, basket on her arm, and settled onto her haunches when she saw he had no journey in mind. He stood when he performed, which was not hard, but it made him more restless when alone. “I think—by the time—no, Túrin did not love her, and as for Finduilas, well, surely she cared for Gwindor? If they argued. Let’s see. And Túrin pursued her at last and fell in a swoon on her grave, we know that. And he loved Gwindor; how not, when Gwindor was with him at Ivrin? But Gwindor—I suppose—Gwindor must have hated him. No. He must have hoped Túrin loved Finduilas, and that was why he couldn’t be persuaded of the truth. For he would have wanted her to be happy, in the end.”

“Oh, no!”

His mood tipped down at once. “Oh no,” he agreed, and took his sandals off and stepped into the stream. His mother had said once that both he and his father were happier than other men, but that they had no ballast, to keep steady the craft. If he took on an ounce of grief he’d sink, and yet he felt the flood almost as freedom. It made him more the master than had his dry, feckless race, his high-riding. As long as he struggled he had yet to succumb; that was the rule for a wasted night. He ought to go beg a bowl of sour milk from Linnor, or go and sing a service for the king. He could see as far as a night of stars.

But it was day, it was red evening. It was his companion’s grief, filling his mind from above. She crouched and watched the far bank huge-eyed, not a tear in evidence, eyes opened but sealed, as it seemed, against sadness that strove for entry, not escape; she sat with wide mouth cracked, nostrils flared, sucking in great absent sniffs of sea-wind. She was besieged as an afterthought, safe and calm except besieged. 

(Gwindor surely wished Finduilas joy. Finduilas, dying, remembered Túrin, and told him where his quest should end. The feathered tops of the reeds glowed on dark stems, _like a fire in a field of reeds_ —there before nightfall he planted for ever the standards of the Noldor and their unsheathed swords, kindling in the dawn.)

He washed his hands and greasy beard in the river. “Your fish will be cold,” he advised. He had abandoned hope of dinner until she brought it, but that was no reason to encourage bad habits in her. Then he had to pick some scales out of his teeth, and couldn’t elaborate, but he heard her uncover the basket, anyway.

He had met her before with a handful of salt, pressing a few grains to her mouth to check their purity. “Dírhaval,” she said wisely, mouth full. “Dírhaval, I have forgotten how to cook.” Meaning she had no spices, witched ovens, and trained assistants—maybe, with her, it really was as though she had forgotten; at least it was something else she had lost.


End file.
